


we return full in colour

by justbecauseyoubelievesomething



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon Compliant, F/F, F/M, Found Family, So stay tuned, Time Travel Fix-It, also this started as a one shot and it is now monstrous and I'm still not sure if it's done yet, this really has no point except me wanting to write feel good fix it stuff, with a hint of my season seven spec thrown in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22897132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbecauseyoubelievesomething/pseuds/justbecauseyoubelievesomething
Summary: Not even Gabriel can predict what happens inside the Anomaly and it's probably better that way. But with a little help from Hope and an unexpected incentive, Clarke is ready to take the plunge. The others might need a little more convincing.//Important Author's Note: Chapters 2-5 can and should be read in any order the reader prefers. You are strongly encouraged to skip back and forth at random!
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Octavia Blake, Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Charmaine Diyoza & Hope Diyoza, Echo/Raven Reyes, Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Octavia Blake & Charmaine Diyoza, Octavia Blake & Hope Diyoza, briefly mentioned becho, mentions of linctavia - Relationship
Comments: 16
Kudos: 60





	1. just like the wind blows into the great unknown

“He’s gone. Bellamy’s gone.”

Echo’s voice is barely raised above her normal timbre, but Murphy, Raven and Emori are already scrambling to their feet.

“What?”

Her chest rises and falls with even breaths, but the sheen on her neck and cheeks suggests she’s been running.

“Octavia was taken by the Anomaly and Bellamy just ran in and vanished.”

There’s a clatter from the other side of the room as Clarke drops something and then a blur of golden hair as she runs for the door, Echo only a step behind her.

Murphy glances at Raven and she immediately firms her lips and gives a slight shake of her head.

“No, I’m not staying here.”

“Raven.”

“Do you know how to drive a motorcycle?” she presses, crossing her arms.

He rolls his eyes. “Do you?”

“I will. Just give me two minutes.” She’s already limping out the door, yanking her hair back into a ponytail.

Finally, he turns to Emori, her dark eyes beginning to waver.

“John, please don’t make me stay.”

“Hey.” He reaches out and pulls her into him, dropping a kiss against her temple with all the softness he can muster.

“Someone needs to stay and keep order. It has to be you.”

Emori trembles against his chest. “What if you don’t come back?”

Murphy chuckles and pulls back enough to give her a wry smile. “I always come back. Even when you don’t want me. You know that.”

Emori gives him a half smile which he takes as encouragement enough to pull her in for one more kiss. She sighs against his lips before pushing him away half-heartedly.

“Go. Before I change my mind.”

Raven is already confidently astride a motorcycle, engine idling. She tosses him a helmet with a smug twist of her lips.

“Told you so.”

“Just drive, Reyes.”

The yellow fields flash by them, lit by the swiftly dimming light of the second sun. Raven doesn’t slow as they approach the barrier and at first Murphy winces, but then he notes Clarke frantically punching in numbers before running back to the motorcycle she’s sharing with Echo. The green light blinks out and the two bikes roar across the boundary line and into the looming forest.

“Where the hell did Clarke learn to drive a motorcycle?” Murphy shouts in Raven’s ear.

She flicks one shoulder dismissively, focusing on following Clarke’s precise path through the gnarled tree roots.

Even with their breakneck pace, it takes a few hours to reach their goal and the red sun has left them in darkness by the time the green glow of the Anomaly ahead begins to filter through the trees.

“Over here!”

Clarke swerves abruptly towards a small clearing and Raven follows suite. As they finally kill the engines, Murphy yanks off his helmet and relishes the relative silence.

Gabriel crouches near a young woman sitting dazedly on the ground. Clarke immediately runs to her, flinging her helmet to the ground.

“You’re Hope?”

Apparently, Echo explained some things to Clarke on the way.

The young woman shakes some of her loose brown hair from her face. “Yeah. Charmaine’s daughter.”

Murphy can’t keep his jaw from his dropping. He hears Raven scoff. But one look at Echo’s stern face keeps them from protesting.

“You came out of the anomaly and stabbed Octavia and then it swallowed her back up?” Clarke pushes.

The girl glares at her defiantly. “You don’t understand. I had to do it. She wanted me to. It was our agreement.”

“What agreement?”

Hope takes a deep breath and talks slowly as if she’s explaining something to a child. “Octavia made an oath. To fix the timestream. But she was too late and my mom… died. Killing Octavia was the only way for her to be reabsorbed into the Anomaly so she could try again.”

“Try again?” Clarke asks patiently.

“Yes. To fix time.” Hope looks around at the others. “That’s what I’m trying to say. We’re in a broken timeline right now.”

Murphy rolls his eyes. “That’s one way to put it.”

Raven elbows him squarely in the ribs.

“So, what happened when Bellamy followed her?” Clarke asks, a little more urgently now.

Hope sighs and draws her knees up to her chest. “I don’t know. If he survived the trip without the passage marks, then he’s somewhere in the timestream. But he won’t know how to navigate it or find Octavia. He should have waited for me to wake up. I could have helped.”

“Passage marks?” This time it’s Raven, drawing closer, curiosity lighting up her eyes.

Hope points to the strange tattoos lining her forehead for an answer. Raven gently grabs the girl’s temples and studies the markings intently.

“These help you go where you want to go?”

“Sort of.” Hope flinches back, pulling her head from Raven’s curious fingers.

“Octavia had the oath on her. Binding her to the Anomaly.” She moves her finger in a spiraling pattern through the air. “Mine are just to travel out.”

Abruptly, she drops her hand. “Knowing where to go is a different story.”

“Can you do it for us?” Clarke interrupts.

Hope blinks up at her. “Give you the passage marks?”

“Yes.” Clarke’s voice is steady even though her hands are visibly shaking.

Murphy moves to reach for her. “Clarke, let’s slow down and think…”

Clarke snatches her arm away and Murphy doesn’t have the heart to grab for her again.

“We need to find Octavia and Bellamy,” she says. “They might be in trouble.”

Hope sizes her up. “You’re serious.”

Clarke only stares grimly at her until the girl blows out a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, yeah. They’re not going to be perfect, but I think I can give you basic in and out markings.”

“Good. Gabriel, help her get what she needs.” Clarke turns to Echo just as the silent woman opens her mouth.

“You need to stay here.”

“Clarke,” Echo growls in warning.

“I’m serious. I need someone I trust running things here and back in Sanctum.”

“Then you stay, and I’ll go!”

“You think that half these people are going to do a damn thing I say?” Clarke spits. “Most of them have made it perfectly clear how they feel about me.”

“I’m right here,” Raven grumbles.

Clarke glances at Murphy and Raven and reigns in her ire. “Besides, I’m going in whether you want me to or not. After everything Bellamy did for me, I owe him. And you.”

Echo searches her eyes intently and Murphy can see the resignation setting in.

“Fine. Just bring him back.”

“I will,” Clarke says with so much fervor that even Murphy believes her.

“We’re coming too,” he says stepping forward.

“No! Fuck you!” Raven hisses at him.

Murphy ignores her as Clarke turns to him in confusion.

“You want to come?”

“It’s Bellamy,” Murphy says helplessly. “I have to.”

Echo mouths a soft thank you to him.

Raven is sputtering like an angry engine. “This is ridiculously insane. We need to plan. We need to stop and figure this out before we just start running into strange glowing lights!”

“Aren’t you just a little bit curious what’s in there?” Murphy wheedles. “Don’t you want to see how the marks work, firsthand? Or would you rather rely on the faulty reports I’ll have to give you when I get back?”

Raven gnaws at her lip and Murphy knows he’s got her. She stomps her foot hard and crosses her arms.

“Fuck you, Murphy.”

“Raven’s in,” he announces to no one in particular.

Clarke looks uneasy with the company. “Look you guys don’t have to do this. I… I do trust you too and I know you could help Echo…”

“Don’t sugarcoat it, Clarke,” Murphy shrugs. “We haven’t been trustworthy, I get it.”

Raven opens her mouth to protest and Murphy seizes the opportunity to elbow her in retaliation.

“Besides,” he continued over the sound of Raven’s sharp gasp, “we owe Bellamy too. We need to do this.”

Clarke’s gaze flickers from one to the other and she gives a slight nod. Murphy lets out a breath. It’s not total acceptance, but she’s coming around.

Gabriel returns with armfuls of crude tattooing equipment. Apparently, even in the creepy murder forests of Sanctum, you find a way.

Clarke goes first, hesitating in front of Hope.

“Where should it go?”

Hope shrugs. “Anywhere. It just matters that it’s a part of you.”

Clarke bites her lip deciding and finally holds out her hands with her wrists up.

Hope only smiles slightly and bends over her, beginning to tattoo the rough outlines of symbols. Clarke winces, but keeps quiet.

Murphy paces restlessly as Raven fumes silently behind him.

Gabriel watches intently. “I think I might be able to follow along with you,” he says finally.

Hope looks over at him, interested.

Gabriel picks up a needle decisively. “I can do someone if I watch while you do it.”

Hope gives him a genuine smile. “Sure. It will go faster that way.”

Murphy looks back at Raven. “Ladies first?”

Raven shoots him a stony glare and he holds his hands up in surrender. “Fine, fine. I’ll go.”

He seats himself in front of Gabriel, whipping his shirt off and drawing a rounded line with his fingertip just above his collarbone. “Make me pretty?” he asks cheekily.

Gabriel rolls his eyes, but his lips do twitch in amusement as he leans in and slowly copies Hope’s shaky figures.

Hope picks up speed as she works on Clarke, growing more confident as she inscribes her with the passage marks. When she’s done, they completely circle both of Clarke’s wrists and a few lines run up each forearm as well. Clarke lets out a long sigh of relief and grabs some bandages from Gabriel’s supplies to wrap the raw areas.

Raven delicately sits with her back turned to Hope and murmurs something lowly to her. Hope nods and gets to work just above Raven’s ear.

With Hope’s practice on Clarke, she finishes Raven’s tattoos with ease, just as Gabriel puts the finishing touches on Murphy’s. Gabriel’s slightly clunkier symbols make up a ring of text that drapes from one side of Murphy’s collarbone to the other, with the top symbols just high enough to peek above his shirt collar. Raven’s are the most delicate and elegant of the bunch, with Hope able to get her technique down enough to write them in a swirling pattern that starts above each ear and drapes its way down to join together at the nape of her neck.

Echo shifts impatiently as they all adjust their bandages. “I could still get the marks and come with you,” she reminds them.

Clarke opens her mouth, but this time it’s Raven who steps up. “We’ll get him back,” she promises. “We’ll get them both back.”

She hugs her and Echo melts into it, eyes screwed tightly shut.

Murphy looks away and licks his lips nervously.

“So, are we doing this shit?”

Gabriel leads them to the fringes of the swirling green light. “Be careful,” he says softly. He gives Clarke a gentle hug and nods at Raven and Murphy.

Murphy wipes a sweaty palm against his leg, trying to ignore the strange prickling sensation beginning to radiate from his tattoos.

Clarke reaches out and grabs his hand. He glances up at her in surprise and finds the strength in her eyes more than reassuring. On the other side, Clarke joins her hand with Raven’s.

“Ready?”

Raven firms her chin. “For Bellamy.”

“For Bellamy,” Clarke echoes.

Murphy takes a deep breath. “For Bellamy.”

And together they take a step.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The upcoming chapters 2-5 can and should be read in any order the reader prefers. You are strongly encouraged to skip back and forth at random!
> 
> Fic title from Desert by Other Lives and chapter title from Dust Bowl III by Other Lives.


	2. the land returns to the dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 2-5 can and should be read in any order the reader prefers. You are strongly encouraged to skip back and forth at random!

He walks through the gates of Arkadia, dripping with blood and sweat, and stops dead in his tracks.

Bellamy remembers. He remembers everything.

Hope stabbing Octavia, his sister dissolving and being inhaled by the looming Anomaly, Gabriel’s frantic shouting as Bellamy ran without stopping until he was dissolving too.

It all happened mere seconds earlier.

And yet, he’s standing stock still in the crowded courtyard of Arkadia as curious onlookers gather around him asking fearful questions about the blood on his armor.

Grounder blood.

Octavia is marching toward him, her face twisted with equal parts confusion and fury.

“What did you do?” she hisses.

He tries to keep his face impassive, but the knowledge of what he just helped carry out washes over him and he feels his jaw twitch.

He pushes past Octavia even as every instinct screams at him to stop.

Pike is behind him, gathering everyone around to explain the cold-blooded massacre in palatable terms. Bellamy can’t listen. Not again.

He shoulders his way past Kane and Abby and into the ship, scrabbling with the buckles on his armor.

Raven limps past, arm slung around Finn’s neck. She’s been having a harder time getting around lately.

“Hey, you okay?” she asks, eyebrows knit.

Bellamy throws his chest plate into one of the equipment lockers with a little more force than necessary. “Fine.”

“Bellamy.” Finn’s no-nonsense tone makes Bellamy turn slightly to face his friends, their faces mirror images of confusion.

His memories flash by in a jumble of mismatched colors. Finn should be dead. Finn died months ago.

No, here Finn is alive and well. Bellamy’s recent memories are very clear on that.

What is this place and why is Finn alive?

He opens his mouth to ask one of the thousands of questions rushing through his head, but all that comes out is, “Where’s Murphy?”

Finn tilts his head. “He’s with that Grounder girl at the prison again. I think he’s convinced he can talk her out of Jaha’s cult.”

“Right, Emori.”

More questions without answers. Murphy should be traipsing around in the woods somewhere, right? But his new set of memories easily supplies that Murphy has been here the whole time. Emori came with Jaha and the chips and Murphy took an immediate shine to her.

Maybe he should have waited and talked to Hope before diving into the Anomaly headfirst. She probably could have warned him about this whole alternate reality headache.

Bellamy feels like he should ask more questions, but there’s something stiff in the way Finn looks at him and suddenly the reason explodes in his mind. Here, Clarke stayed after Mount Weather. She stayed and helped build Arkadia and heal their people. She broke things off with Finn because… because…

She has feelings for Bellamy.

And as his two timelines of memories shift and adjust, its swiftly becoming apparent that he has feelings for her too.

Raven puts a comforting hand on his arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m great.” He shrugs her away and tries to ignore the look of hurt on her face.

“Okay, well…” Raven doesn’t elaborate and merely nudges Finn to keep moving down the hall with her. Bellamy watches them go, drawing in deep, even breaths.

The Anomaly sent him to this time and place. There must be a reason. Octavia must be close.

He looks down at his shaking hands and cautiously reaches up to skim his fingertips across his clean-shaven chin. If he’s in his younger body, Octavia probably is too.

The old familiar hallways taunt him as he navigates the twists and turns to find his sister. He hasn’t seen this place since leaving Jasper to his fate. Maybe, in this alternate universe, there’s a way to fix that too. A way to fix everything.

Then again, the blood stains on his pants are a good sign that it’s already too late to fix the things that really matter.

Octavia finds him first and before he can even start to question her, she drags him towards an all too familiar room. A lump forms in his throat as he realizes what’s about to happen.

He’s going to see Clarke. His Clarke.

He doesn’t even have time to brace himself before Octavia opens the door and unceremoniously shoves him inside, still giving him a good tongue-lashing as she does.

He has feelings for Clarke. Both sets of memories are screaming with confirmation of that. But there’s always something in the way. Building Arkadia after Mount Weather fell and scouting missions and negotiations. Or from that other world, long ago, the death of Gina and a pair of handcuffs.

It shouldn’t matter. With every memory compiled, the picture is crystal clear.

Octavia slams the door behind him and he’s face to face with her as he comes to the realization.

He loves Clarke Griffin.

Clarke stares at him, eyes shining with hope. Her hair is cleaner than he remembers and lacking the traditional Grounder braids. And there’s more light in her eyes.

He remembers now, she’s only been in Polis for a few weeks, taken there forcibly by Roan after a scouting mission gone wrong. She may not have left him after Mount Weather in this universe, but she still elected to stay in Polis and negotiate with Lexa. She still made him come home alone in shame and fear after Mount Weather was blown to pieces.

“Bellamy,” she says softly.

He takes a step, itching to kiss her or slap her, he’s not sure which one.

He reigns himself in, clenches his fists at his sides. “Clarke.”

They stare each other down and finally she takes a deep breath. “I understand why you did it,” she says.

The massacre. She leaves that part unspoken.

Bellamy blinks at her. He searches for the right words to say and comes up empty.

“I understand,” she says again, taking a step closer. “You just wanted to protect us. All of us.”

“Yeah,” he says softly, voice cracking a little. He can’t let himself cry. Not now.

“But now we need to work together to protect everyone again. From the rest of the Grounders.”

She sits slowly in the chair and it’s far too similar a scene. He has the handcuffs looped through his belt and his fingers twitch instinctively to grab for them.

He can make this choice himself. Fate can’t possibly dictate everything.

Clarke stares at him steadily. “Lexa will send all her forces at us if we don’t give her Pike. She has a soft spot for me and that’s why she broke her own rules and killed Queen Nia, but I don’t think I can push her for much more. I can try, but if it’s not enough…”

Clarke trails off and Bellamy already knows what the situation is anyways, so what’s the point? He feels familiar anger well up inside him, tired of the politics and frustrated with Clarke. His princess who was supposed to have his back. Together against the world.

“Let them come,” he says lowly. “You know we could beat them.”

“I don’t know,” Clarke corrects him tersely. “That’s the problem.”

His memories mix and swirl into a storm of emotion. “You stayed in Polis with Lexa. You could have come back with me. We could have stopped this together.”

Clarke blinks at him. “I…”

“They blew up Mount Weather, Clarke. They stole you from me. They took you away and then when I came to save you, you made it all worth nothing.” His voice rises as he advances on her and her lip quivers slightly.

“Bellamy, I’m sorry. I wish I could explain.”

“What is there to explain?” he nearly shouts. “Together. That’s what we said. And that’s what we did. And then you just… I had to come home without you.”

A tear slides down Clarke’s cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

Bellamy closes his eyes and tries to catch his breath as his chest heaves with rage. The old Clarke comes to mind unbidden, the devastation in her eyes as he captured her wrist in a handcuff and walked away. The feeling of sick, satisfying justice.

He steels himself and steps up to her, bending to one knee to look her in the eye. Unshed tears glisten in her eyes and she smiles hopefully at him, but with wariness. As his hand encircles her wrist, she tenses as if anticipating his next move.

But the handcuffs are suddenly forgotten as Bellamy’s fingers graze across the band of tattoos around her wrist. Symbols he’s seen many times in the past few months as they worked together building the walls around Arkadia, as they drank and laughed with Raven at night, that one time in the Rover he’d been bold enough to reach over and hold her hand for a scant few seconds.

But this is the first time Bellamy truly sees the all too familiar writing. A reflection of the golden orb deep beneath Gabriel’s tent. The spiraling ink across Octavia’s shoulder blades. The lines across Hope Diyoza’s face as her blade flashed in the green light.

Bellamy tightens his fingers around Clarke’s wrist, feeling lightheaded.

“Bellamy?”

Clarke is staring at him with wide, concerned eyes and he’s starting to put so many pieces together that the sheer force of everything clicking into place forces him into action and he’s diving forward because he needs, he needs, he needs…

His lips meet her own _hard_ and she tilts her head and deepens it immediately, like she’s been expecting it. He pours everything he feels, every pain and joy she’s ever given him into that kiss. His mind spins as she grazes his lower lip with her teeth. He should stay in this timeless space and kiss Clarke Griffin forever.

But she pulls back first, eyes sparking with heat and merely says, “You remember.”

There’s still so much to talk about. How she followed him through the Anomaly across time and space to this reality. How they can possibly go back. But now, right now, it doesn’t matter as much as her.

He sees all versions of her at once; hair cut short as she laughs with Madi, eyes vacant as she turns her back on him and walks away from Camp Jaha, face full of light as they wade in the shallows of the pond…

He loves all versions of her in every universe.

He loves Clarke Griffin.

“I remember,” he says before pulling her face back to him. “I remember, I remember, I remember.”

He peppers her with kisses interwoven with that phrase, a prayer to a god he forgot he believed in. She tries to say something a few times, but he’s too desperate to have this. In this time where nothing is holding them back. No obligations, no one else to love, no fear. He needs to have this now before it all slips away. She seems to realize and she starts to kiss him back with more fire and he dearly hopes Octavia doesn’t decide to come back in the room because Clarke Griffin is pushing him down on the table he once handcuffed her to and he’s not going to stop her for anything in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title from Desert by Other Lives and chapter title from Dust Bowl III by Other Lives.


	3. is there any one, to get this writing off the wall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 2-5 can and should be read in any order the reader prefers. You are strongly encouraged to skip back and forth at random!

The sharp clatter of gun fire wakes him up.

At least that’s the best way Murphy can explain the sudden shift in his brain as he abruptly drops the rifle to the floor of the Dropship.

Six, almost seven, years of memories slam into his brain faster than he can breathe.

His last memory, of walking into the Anomaly, hand in hand with Clarke Griffin of all people.

His other last memory, spraying bullets recklessly into the floor of the Dropship while Bellamy screams for his sister.

Murphy’s brain starts firing again, even as the last echoes of gunfire die. He’s breathing now, short panicky breaths.

Bellamy balances precariously on his toes, the noose yanking him too high to move. Murphy stumbles across the room on leaden legs and tugs at the securing knot with shaking fingers.

He just shot Raven. She’s somewhere beneath the ship, bullet in her spine.

He just tried to kill Bellamy. Bellamy’s going to murder to him.

The thought crosses his mind that he can run. Up the ladder, blow the wall and slip into the trees. He can avoid the Grounders. Melt into the forest and disappear.

He shoves the little voice into the far corners of his mind and finishes untying the knot. Bellamy gasps in relief as the sudden release in tension throws him to the floor.

Murphy runs to his side. “Are you okay? We need to get out there and….”

Bellamy punches him. Hard.

Murphy goes down in a heap, cradling his face as blood starts to spill from his nose.

“Stay down,” Bellamy grunts. “Don’t move.”

Bellamy grabs the rifle and slowly points it at Murphy, staggering to his feet.

“What is this? You’re suddenly done trying to get your revenge?” he questions.

Murphy swipes at the gushing blood and is rewarded with a splintering burst of pain from his broken nose.

“I’m sorry, Bellamy,” he says softly, trying not to whimper. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Shouldn’t have…” Bellamy scoffs. “I should kill you. You’re a murderer. You can’t just apologize and be done with it.”

Another unwelcome thought flits through Murphy’s head; that there isn’t much point in this time travel business if he can’t fix his own mistakes.

He closes his eyes in resignation. “Do whatever you want with me, Bell. But do it fast because I think I hit Raven when I shot the floor and she needs help.”

Two beats of silence pass and Murphy opens his eyes to see Bellamy’s brows pinch. “Why did you just call me Bell?”

The door signals its slow opening with a shuttering creak. Excited voices from outside draw closer.

Murphy swallows painfully. “You better decide what you’re going to do with me fast because they’re going to kill me if you don’t.”

Bellamy blinks at him a few more times and then strides to the open door just as people begin to surge into the ship.

“Bellamy! You’re okay!”

“What did you do to Murphy?”

“Leave him,” Bellamy shouts, deep voice cutting over the chatter. The wave of delinquents halts and turns to him like a sea of magnets. Bellamy gives a weary nod.

“We’ll deal with him after we handle the Grounders,” he says. “Someone keep an eye on him. And someone come with me to go get Raven. She might be hurt.”

The delinquents scatter to their tasks and Murphy huddles against the wall. Belatedly, he realizes Myles’ dead body is still laying in the corner. With a grunt he hauls himself to his feet only to be met by Miller’s rifle planted in his chest.

“Don’t move,” Miller growls.

Murphy spits in frustration. “I was just going to move the body. Give the kid a decent place to rest.”

Miller glances over at the body and then back at Murphy in doubt. “Yeah, sure. Give me a break.”

“Really, Miller. I promise.”

“And a promise is supposed to be good enough for me?”

“You can come with me. And we can come right back.”

Miller still looks doubtful and he keeps his gun pointed in Murphy’s general direction, but his eyes stray back to Myles.

“Fine,” he says slowly. “Not outside the walls though.”

“Okay.” Murphy stiffly rights himself and makes his way to the body again. He softly closes the boy’s eyes feeling another pang of regret. What else could he have done? What else should he have done?

The body is heavy as he carries it out, Miller always a half-step behind. He finds a length of tarp left from the bodies they’d covered during the sickness and he tucks Myles beneath it with as much care as he can muster. Finally, he steps back with a heavy sigh and turns to follow Miller back inside, just as Bellamy and Jasper come around the dropship supporting Raven between them and Clarke and Finn come running through the gate.

Frantic news is exchanged and there’s some arguing between the King and the Princess, but Miller herds Murphy back towards the dropship before he can try to say anything. As he goes, he feels a set of eyes burning into him and he shoots a glare at Finn.

“Got something to say, spacewalker?”

Finn cocks an eyebrow at him. “When did you get tattoos?”

Murphy glances down and he can just make out the dark line of letters peeking out in a ring from his collar, just under the ring of faded bruises left from his own hanging. He presses his lips together searching for an answer.

“Must have been some Grounder torture thing.”

Finn’s gaze doesn’t let up, as he completely ignores Clarke and Bellamy’s squabbles for a moment.

“Looks like some kind of symbols. Do you think they mean something?”

Murphy shrugs feeling a sudden weight to his words. “Doesn’t seem like it, does it?”

Does it?

The question echoes through his head as Clarke convinces them all to pack up and leave camp. It haunts him on the walk through the woods, even as he tenses and waits with bated breath for the sign of Grounders that sends them scrambling back to the dropship. It follows him through the battle, when someone reluctantly hands him a spear and he helps defend the wall.

He helps Miller pull people into the ship and it might be his imagination, but he thinks there’s far more than forty-eight delinquents crowding the room, something that gives him pause. Then he remembers: being tied to a tree, the radio ripped from his hands and the gleam of victory in Tristan’s eyes. Things that never happened in this here and now. A ripple of hope goes through him.

“Finn, no!” Clarke screams. The stupid spacewalker is about to go running across the battlefield to help Bellamy. Miller has Clarke all but pinned down to keep her from doing the same.

Flashes of Finn losing his mind, executing the Grounder in the bunker, mowing down women and children at the village, all cascade through Murphy’s memories in an instant.

“I’ll get Bellamy! Finn, stay with Clarke!” Murphy yells. He throws down his spear and pulls his knife from his belt, immediately dodging a blow from a Grounder and retaliating with a stab to the throat.

He hears Clarke and Finn yell after him, but Bellamy meets his eyes and a moment of understanding passes between them. Murphy lets out a passable battle cry and slashes another throat, spinning deftly between seeking blades to stab Tristan’s leg. The Grounder commander lets out a throaty howl and backhands Murphy, sending him sliding through the mud. As he sits up and wipes the slop from his eyes, he catches a glimpse of the dropship door rising and a small smile crosses his face.

“Eat shit, broken timeline.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title from Desert by Other Lives and chapter title from Dust Bowl III by Other Lives.


	4. the skyline is not seen for many days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 2-5 can and should be read in any order the reader prefers. You are strongly encouraged to skip back and forth at random!

Raven should really be used to weird things happening in her head, but she’s not. Which is apparent, by the way her head snaps back and her ears start ringing even harder as her vision adjusts to the room around her.

She turns to say something to Clarke, but there’s only her own hand, still grasping at thin air.

She’s standing on the floor of Becca’s lab, the spotless white walls only mocking the bright red droplets on the floor, courtesy of her latest seizure.

Sinclair smiles at her, nonplussed by the sudden influx of information. Of course he wouldn’t be, he was just a part of her own brain.

Becca has disappeared entirely.

“You remembered that you don’t need her,” Sinclair explains as Raven looks around tentatively.

Her fingers snake up and trace the flowing script along the outline of her ear.

“Right. Passage marks. Time travel,” she dead pans. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to try to think back to six years ago to recall what’s happening, her brain helpfully supplying the memories as if they only happened moments ago.

What’s less helpful is the knowledge that Miller, Murphy, and the others are already gone, far enough that it’s useless to call them back. She’s stuck, the death wave is coming, and she’s already dug her own grave. More appropriately, the grave of the others who will inevitably come for her.

Raven bites her lip and refuses to start crying. Of all the cruel tricks, the Anomaly played the worst; to send her back to one of her greatest failures after it’s too late to fix it.

She looks up at Sinclair, still waiting patiently for her to decide something. A new set of memories scrolls through her mind, side by side with the old. In this world, she watched Sinclair die by Emerson’s hand, but not before Finn attacked them with ALIE’s chip embedded in his brain. Not before Finn tried to kill her, just outside the walls of Arkadia. Raven feels the wrenching heartache of holding the gun up to him and pleading with him, begging him, to not let her shoot him.

Finn, who lived and helped massacre Mount Weather with Clarke, only for Clarke to push him away. Finn who tried so hard to help Raven in her worst moments of pain. Finn who took the chip only because of Raven’s torture.

She feels the guilt, pain and confusion wash over her all at once and she ducks her head, sucking in deep calming breaths.

“It’s okay, Raven,” Sinclair says. “You know now that we’re always with you.”

“I know.” And she really does.

She runs her fingers again over the tattoos, wondering about this new timeline. This timeline where she distinctly remembers Bellamy getting these same symbols tattooed up and down his forearms about a month ago. Murphy has his around his collarbone and she’s fairly certain she’s seen Clarke’s wristbands too.

“They all got here before me,” she says to Sinclair. “That must be the explanation. We don’t know how to control where we’re going like Hope does, so the Anomaly just threw us wherever it wanted.”

“Sounds logical,” Sinclair snorts. But he doesn’t disagree.

Raven tries to think past the buzz of another looming seizure. “They must have been here a while to make this timeline so different. I mean, Bellamy and Clarke are practically joined at the hip, and they just danced around that before. Murphy hasn’t tried to run off on his own. Finn…” She chokes a little on his name.

“Astute observations, but I think you need to make a decision about whether or not to save that beautiful brain of yours,” Sinclair urges.

The buzzing is getting worse.

Raven wonders if radioing Polis immediately will hasten her pick up enough to make a difference, but her surviving the ice bath with no one else around is still so much of a random chance that she can’t justify it.

She’s equal parts relieved and pissed when she crawls shivering to the radio and announces that she’s alive. She rolls onto her back in exhaustion, letting her eyelids droop.

“Living kind of sucks sometimes,” she says to Sinclair even though she can’t see him anymore. She knows he’s there and that’s comforting.

When she can move, she starts to prep the rocket for the one-way trip. She can only do so much by herself, but every little bit counts. She’s determined to not screw this up any more than she already has.

She tries thinking ahead to the fuel problem on the ring, calculating what else she can bring to help. She sets a memory stick to download as many of Becca’s files as she can fit on it, hoping against hope that even just one data set will prove invaluable. She desperately tries not to watch the death wave move across the screen or the timer tick down.

When her family arrives like a band of superheroes, complete with suits and helmets, she wants to cry.

Bellamy pulls her into a hug and grins. “Nice tattoos,” he says.

“Thanks.” She can’t help but smile back. “I’m almost ready to go.”

“Good.” Clarke is smiling brighter than she’s ever seen her smile. She pulls her into a tight hug and Raven returns it with ferocity.

“I missed you,” Clarke whispers in her ear and Raven wants to cry again.

“I’m sorry, for everything before,” Raven says faintly. “When I shot Finn I… there’s so much I shouldn’t have held against you.”

“And there’s so much I shouldn’t have expected you to be okay with,” Clarke says seriously as she pulls back. “So, let’s call this our official fresh start, deal?”

“Deal.”

“Mushy, mushy, mush,” Murphy teases. He elbows her in the ribs and in one set of memories that was only a few hours ago and she can still feel the ache if she thinks hard about it.

“Fuck you, Murphy.”

“Love you too, Reyes. Took you long enough to get here.”

Monty, Harper, Emori, and Echo stand a little apart blinking in some confusion.

“Hey, guys, can someone explain what’s happening?” Monty finally says.

Bellamy laughs and it’s a hearty laugh that Raven hasn’t heard in the old timeline for years. “Let’s get up to the Ring first. Right, Raven?”

“Right. I just need some help with the manual stuff now. I got most of it prepared already.”

“And we picked up the oxygen generator on the way up here,” Murphy drawls. Raven glares at him and he winks. “You’re welcome.”

“Okay, so while we get the rest of the stuff ready, someone needs to go align the satellite dish. The comms burned out again.”

Bellamy and Clarke exchange glances before Clarke steps forward. “We’ll do it.”

Raven nods, not knowing why she bothered to ask. “You’ve got a whole hour. Plenty of time, but don’t stop and have a picnic or anything.”

Clarke smirks and fastens her helmet back on as Bellamy heads for the stairs.

“Hey, what happened in Polis anyways?” Raven asks.

Clarke sighs. “The usual. Ontari went for full ownership of the bunker, Trikru tried to start all-out war, and Octavia sliced Ontari in half when she threatened Lincoln.”

Raven blinks. Some different players than last time, but war still prevails. “Wow, yeah. Okay, pretty much the usual.”

“And Roan’s dead,” Echo mutters harshly. They all turn to her. Raven realizes it’s the first thing she’s said the whole time.

“Yeah, that sucks,” Murphy says gently. Echo looks like she’s not sure whether to yell at him or not, but she doesn’t say anything else.

“Clarke, let’s go,” Bellamy calls down the stairs to her. “The rest of you, listen to Raven.”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” Murphy throws him a salute and Bellamy Blake actually sticks out his tongue at Murphy before heading back outside.

Raven quickly resumes the role of taskmaster, although with her prep work and the early arrival of the oxygen generator there’s not nearly as much to do as she remembers. She sets Monty and Harper to downloading even more files as well as dismantling small tech. She might not have it all figured out yet but getting back to the ground on time looks more and more likely with each passing moment.

“Where’s Echo?” Raven stops in her tracks suddenly to quiz Emori and Murphy, who both shake their heads. Murphy looks more than a little concerned.

“Want me to go find her?”

“No, I got this,” Raven says distantly, a half-forgotten memory floating just behind her eyelids. One where Echo crouches in front of a flame, covered in blood, knife in her hand.

Raven takes the stairs as fast as her bad leg can manage. Echo kneels on the floor, hands visibly shaking, but no blood has been spilled. Yet.

Raven shuffles awkwardly into a kneeling position and gently wraps her hand around Echo’s clenched fist.

“Hey, hey,” she coaxes. Echo draws in a shaky breath, refusing to look at her.

Raven tries again. “Echo, listen. You don’t want to do this. Not after everything you’ve gone through to survive.”

The spy closes her eyes and a single tear drips down her cheek. Raven worries her lip against her teeth. This has never been her strong suite. Clarke and Bellamy give the lifesaving speeches. Not her.

But then Echo’s shoulders start to shake in earnest and Raven wraps her arm around the other girl before she can over think it. Echo is tense, but she doesn’t push her away and that feels like something.

“Come with us,” Raven whispers. “Your fight here is over, but you have a whole new life up there just waiting for you to live it. Come with us and see what it’s like.”

Echo lets out a sharp sob. “How? All I know is here. All I knew died with Roan in that bunker.”

“You know me,” Raven says with fervor. Echo glances up at her unsure and Raven tries to hold back the fire in her voice. “At least, you know me now.”

Echo coughs a little and looks down at her knife blade. “Maybe.”

The electric lights cast a dull sheen on the blade and for a moment they both just watch it as Echo tilts it back and forth, wavering.

“So,” Raven softly pushes. “Will you come with us, get to know me better? Or is this going to be a pen pal situation?”

Echo blinks at her in confusion. Raven lets herself smirk a little.

“You know, write each other?”

Echo finds her voice. “From… from space?”

Raven can’t hold back the giggle that spills up and out of her throat at Echo’s bewildered voice and despite the gravity of the situation, it feels so incredibly good to laugh.

Echo doesn’t join in, but by the time Raven regains her composure the spy is sitting up straighter and the knife sits forgotten on the ground.

“I will come with you,” she says slowly, as if the words are foreign on her tongue.

Raven smiles and hoists herself up. “Good!” She offers a hand to Echo and the Grounder woman only hesitates for a second before accepting.

“My pen work isn’t as good as my sword work,” Echo confides in Raven as they head towards the stairs.

Raven starts laughing all over again.

The hour flies by in a blur. Bellamy and Clarke make it back with only moments to spare and Raven is about to scold them for taking more time than necessary when she sees the look on Clarke’s face.

“What?”

Clarke takes off her helmet and sets it firmly on one of the empty desktops. “I’m staying here.”

There’s a chorus of objections from the other passengers inside the rocket and Raven can’t deny that they match the screaming disapproval in her own head. But then she sees Bellamy softly kiss the side of Clarke’s head and she feels something fall into place.

“Madi?”

Clarke nods, eyes growing damp. “She’s going to be alone unless I stay. The night blood works. This… this is what I have to do.”

Raven launches herself down the ladder and into Clarke’s arms, holding her so tight she’s afraid she might leave bruises. Clarke doesn’t complain.

“I will come back for you. On time,” Raven whispers. It’s a desperate sort of oath, but she means it with every fiber of her being.

Clarke clings to her a little tighter. “You’d better.”

They let go and Clarke sniffs and turns to Bellamy one last time with an almost playful smile.

“See you in five years?”

“Five years,” he promises. “You’d better call me.”

They exchange that sort of secretive smile again and for a split-second Raven feels jealous of this. This side they bring out in each other that she’s never seen before. Something she’s never had, not even with Finn. Something she vows to give herself someday.

“Every day,” Clarke says.

Raven has the decency to climb into the rocket and leave them in relative privacy for the last sixty seconds. When Bellamy climbs in, his eyes are rimmed in red, but his jaw is set firmly.

“Looking to you, Raven,” he says and she accepts his deferment with a brisk nod and a few barked warnings. Clarke’s empty seatbelt bounces and sways as the rocket shudders into flight, but today there’s no ghost hanging over the seat. She’s always with them. Raven really does know it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title from Desert by Other Lives and chapter title from Dust Bowl III by Other Lives.


	5. moving west may bring us better days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 2-5 can and should be read in any order the reader prefers. You are strongly encouraged to skip back and forth at random!

She pulls the lever and the sensation of shattering glass echoes through her mind.

Clarke blinks and blinks again, reabsorbing thousands of memories from another life. Her hands can still feel Raven and Murphy’s tight grasps as they walk into the green glow. And yet, her hand grasps a familiar lever, Bellamy’s own hand held firmly over top.

No, she can’t be too late to change this.

But the Mount Weather security displays in front of her show otherwise, as hundreds of people begin to fall. Each body, a new weight on her conscious. Another relived trauma. She shudders and pushes herself away from the control console.

“Hey, it’s okay.”

Finn’s voice is welcome, and she turns quickly into his embrace. Bellamy heads for the door, followed quickly by Monty.

“We should go too,” Clarke whispers, but Finn only hugs her tighter.

“Give yourself a second,” he says gently, running a hand along her hair.

Clarke whimpers and closes her eyes. Her memories clash painfully against each other in two distinct sets. Two alternate worlds.

She opens her eyes and scans Finn’s tired face. “Finn?”

“Yeah?”

In this world, Finn escaped Mount Weather with her, helped her rally their people, held her together as she negotiated the alliance, followed her into the Reaper tunnels even after Lexa turned her back on them both.

This Finn is real and standing in front of her.

“How?”

She cuts herself off as she reaches to cup his face and the passage marks peek out from the bottom of her glove.

She’s seen them on Sanctum, of course. Moments ago. But if she thinks hard enough, searching through her new set of memories, she’s seen them here too.

On Murphy.

Clarke takes a deep breath and heads for the door.

“Okay, second over,” she says.

Finn doesn’t say anything, but she can feel him fall in step with her as she heads for level five. The carnage is as bad as she remembers, maybe worse the second time around. She steps as respectfully as she can around the fallen, trying not to look at their faces.

Jasper sits cradling Maya, tears streaming down his face.

Clarke chokes on her words.

Finn whispers something that sounds like “I’m sorry,” but Clarke can’t wait for Jasper’s reply. She can’t handle the look in his eyes. She pushes past him, leaving Finn to do the talking.

The dormitory is full of crying and laughing as Octavia, Bellamy, and Monty help release their people. Clarke scans the room anxiously, resisting the urge to immediately run to her mom. She spots Murphy in the corner, supporting a very shaky girl and he gives her a weak smile as she heads his way.

“I remember,” she says breathlessly, and Murphy almost drops the poor girl. Clarke hurries to help him move her to a comfortable sitting position.

“Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about,” Murphy mutters, bumping her shoulder.

In answer, Clarke shoves up the wrist of her glove, revealing the band of symbols. Murphy’s eyes are wide, and he reaches up and runs a finger across the barely visible symbols poking up past his shirt.

“Clarke,” he finally says.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been here so long. I thought… I thought...”

She’s alarmed to see tears begin welling up in his eyes.

“Murphy, it’s okay!” She pulls him into a hug. “It’s okay.”

He shakes with suppressed sobs against her shoulder and she just holds him, regardless of the chaos around them. She tries to think back through this timeline, to when this Murphy appeared with these tattoos, but realizes with a pang of guilt that she has no idea. Did she really think so little of Murphy that she never even stopped to notice when he acted differently?

She’s here now and she remembers. It’s a start.

“You’re not alone,” she whispers over and over to him and eventually he stops shaking and pulls away from her, wiping roughly at his eyes and nose.

He gives her a crooked smile. “Welcome to the new timeline, Princess.”

“The Anomaly put us in an… alternate time?”

Murphy shrugs. “As far as I can tell. I keep trying to make better decisions based on what I remember from the first time around and everything just keeps subtly changing.”

His eyes glaze over and he squeezes Clarke’s wrist tightly. “I’m so afraid, Clarke. So afraid that I’m screwing everything up. I’m just trying to do better, but what if…. What if all these little changes add up to something big and bad? What if…”

Clarke slides her fingers through his own and squeezes tightly. “Hey! Listen to me. I’m here now. Whatever huge snowball effect this whole mess will have at the end, we’re both going to be responsible for. Got it?”

Murphy closes his eyes and blows out a shuddery breath, but nods.

Clarke helps him stand.

“I guess we should get back to helping?” Clarke says, suddenly feeling out of her element. There are still so many questions swirling through her brain, not the least of which is, where did their versions of Bellamy and Octavia and Raven end up.

But Murphy gives her a reassuring smile and a nod. “Yeah. And when we have a minute to ourselves back at the camp, I’ll try to fill you in on everything I know. I mean, you’ve got the gist of it… new timeline… um… that’s about it.”

Clarke laughs a little, even though she knows that was Murphy’s goal and he gives her hand one more squeeze. “I’m glad you’re here, Princess.” Then he weaves his way over to help load Abby onto a stretcher.

Clarke helps direct the caravan back to Camp Jaha in a bit of a daze. Bellamy and the others seem to understand, no doubt putting it down to the massacre and that’s definitely part of it. But it’s also her preoccupation with watching Murphy; the way he moves among their people easily, encouraging people here and there, helping the injured get to their feet, almost always smiling. He’s definitely changed. And changed things around him too.

And then there’s Finn. Sweet, determined, overly moralistic Finn. Alive and well and giving her a loving smile whenever she looks his way. Because of course he’s alive. Of course they’re in love.

Clarke’s memories clash again, and she winces, forcing herself to look away. It’s a problem she can solve another day.

They reach Camp Jaha and Clarke lingers on the fringes of the camp, letting the others pass by in a winding trail. The sunlight dances over her face and warms her fingertips slightly, threatening to chase away the cold, bloody imprint of the mountain.

“I think we deserve a drink.” Bellamy stands nearby, rifle slung easily over one shoulder. Smiling in a way that makes her want to smile too.

She remembers leaving. Running. Abandoning him. The nightmares followed her anyway.

Murphy’s voice echoes through her head. Better decisions.

Here she gets to choose again. And the way Bellamy is looking at her, with warmth and affection and sympathy, makes her want to break and run into his arms.

She came back to save him after all.

She clenches her fist and mentally traces the path of the passage marks around her wrists and up each arm. Binding her to him, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Maybe she wasn’t meant to fix the massacre. Maybe this moment was her mistake.

“Clarke?”

She turns to him and smiles. “I think you’re right. Lead me to it.”

They walk arm in arm through the gates of Camp Jaha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title from Desert by Other Lives and chapter title from Dust Bowl III by Other Lives.


	6. is there any way, to get this weight off my skin

The farm is burning. The flames lick up and down the thirsty seedbeds, devouring every hint of life.

Octavia should be triumphant, secure in her victory.

But she can’t be. Not as the Anomaly swoops in and thrusts the weight of her conscience forcibly back into her brain. She drops to her knees, mouth stretched in a silent scream as the oath she branded into her skin comes to life and then slowly fades to a throbbing pain.

She’s back to try again and she’s weeping.

Bellamy’s strong arms are lifting her. “Hey, I got you, O. I’m here.”

“Big brother,” she manages to squeak. He’s holding her, cradling her like a child. His closeness a balm her soul has needed for years.

“Big brother,” she tries again, but he shushes her softly and holds her tighter.

“We’re all here,” he whispers roughly.

She’s aware now of the knowing eyes of Monty and Harper as they watch the scene unfold. The way Bellamy is unshaken by the destruction of the farm. The symbols snaking up his forearms.

She reaches out and traces a line across his taut muscles with a half-smile. “Hope.”

Bellamy chuckles a little. “She helped us come after you.”

“Of course she did.” Octavia sits up with a groan, shoulder blades itching. The Anomaly calls.

“You’re going to have to explain things to me quickly, O,” Bellamy says earnestly. “About you and this oath.”

Octavia winces. “It’s Sheidheda, Bell. He got into the timestream and corrupted it.”

She hesitates. “Or he will… It’s sometime in the future.”

“Ouch.” They all look at Monty who’s rubbing his temple with his knuckles exaggeratedly. “Don’t mind me. Just keep giving everyone headaches.”

Harper rolls her eyes. “Ignore him.”

Octavia takes a deep breath and tries to focus on the spiral and the siren song it spins. “He followed me and Diyoza. It took us so long to understand the Anomaly and the timestream. But we found a place we could be safe for a little while and Diyoza could just be a mom.”

Her voice wavers a little as a lump grows in her throat.

“We- I- made the mistake of trusting Sheidheda… they- he- I thought I could trust him. I led him straight to Hope.”

Her voice cracks and the tears start to fall. “He taught us how to manipulate the timestream with the marks. We figured out that we could leave and come back through the Anomaly. Like a doorway. But he took Hope and jumped through the stream. Diyoza and I spent so long looking for her. So long…”

She sobs and Bellamy holds her tight. She hears whispers and footsteps as Monty and Harper politely dismiss themselves from the chamber. Not that it matters much. The tears are already pouring down her face as every reminder of her failures comes screeching back to the forefront of her brain. She remembers every prick of guilt for losing Diyoza’s daughter, every ounce of shame for the way she treated Bellamy, every bit of the horror she’s been through countless times now as she relives the timeline over and over and watches Blodreina rise and fall.

Smoke begins to seep through the open doorway and Octavia coughs harshly, choking back her tears.

“We should go.”

Bellamy helps her up and they make their way towards the surface without a word. Octavia’s mind spins as her thoughts finally start to catch up. This is not the same timeline she spent years jumping through with Diyoza. Bellamy isn’t just here to rescue her, he’s changed things. She shoots a questioning glance at her brother.

He catches her look out of the corner of his eye and gives her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, the others who came with me are safe. Murphy and Raven are stirring up trouble for McCreary and Clarke is on her way to help them and hopefully keep Madi safe for a while. We have time.”

She hasn’t even started thinking of the others. But Bellamy is on top of things. They have a plan.

Octavia sighs a little in relief and then tears prick at the corners of her eyes again. “Bell… this timeline… I killed him. Lincoln.”

His hands tighten on her shoulders. “I know, O. I’m so sorry.”

The fucking cannibalism. He refused to eat and she had to pull the trigger. She convinced herself it was necessary. This timeline left everything she ever wanted in a nice neat package in her lap and what did she do? Ruined it. Murdered the love of her life and shattered her own mind in the process.

“He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve me.”

“He loved you,” Bellamy says fiercely. “If he saw you now, the things you’re trying to do for your friends, he would be proud.”

That sets her off crying again, enough tears to wash away most of the blood on her face. She wipes the rest off with her sleeve and feels more like Octavia again. The Octavia who hunts Sheidheda through time and space.

She takes a shuddery breath and stops Bellamy in his tracks. “Wait, let me finish explaining.”

He halts and looks at her expectantly.

“Diyoza and I found Hope years ago,” Octavia says nervously. “Sheidheda took her back. A long way back. Before the bombs went off.”

Bellamy’s eyes widen slightly, but he doesn’t say anything.

“We had him pinned down, but something got messed up. Something always gets messed up,” she huffs. “I went to change events in the timestream to keep Sheidheda from taking Hope. I tried everything. I tried preventing myself from bringing him to us in the first place. I tried stopping him from entering the Anomaly. I tried stopping him from taking Hope out from under us. None of it mattered.”

“Until you tried coming back through the Anomaly,” Bellamy says, eyes lighting up a little.

“Yes. I thought if I came back through the door, so to speak, maybe change would be possible. But then Hope came through and I knew something terrible had happened.”

Octavia closes her eyes trying not to imagine the terrible things that Sheidheda must have threatened to get Diyoza to give herself up.

“Somehow Hope is free and Diyoza is gone which means… I still failed.”

“And Hope knows your oath binds you to the Anomaly so stabbing you…”

“Was the only way to do a reset,” Octavia finishes for him. She hesitates as he knits his brows darkly. “What?”

“O?”

“Yes?”

“I need you to make an oath to me to not make any other oaths that involve you dying. Even temporarily.”

That actually draws a chuckle from her, and she jostles his arm playfully. “You can try, big brother. But you don’t tell me what to do anymore.”

He nudges her back, still gentle. “So now what?”

“Now?” Octavia looks down at her palms as if the answer will magically spring from her hands. “I don’t know. So many of you here… you changed a lot more than I usually do.”

“Maybe that’s the answer,” Bellamy says offhandedly. “Maybe you just need more help.”

She stares at him, fighting the urge to drop her jaw to the floor.

That’s the answer.

Sheidheda isolated her. So many of his mind games revolved around keeping her and Diyoza apart and especially away from Hope. Alone, Octavia can keep fighting, but eventually he will wear her all the way down. It’s inevitable.

But together…

“That’s why I went back,” Octavia stammers.

Bellamy quirks an eyebrow at her.

“That’s the answer.” She spreads her arms as if to indicate the whole of Polis and the desert beyond. “I needed people to help me. I needed… you.”

She lowers her arms and looks at him sheepishly. “I still need you. That’s why I went back to that time and place through the Anomaly. I knew I would find you and you would help me.”

He stays still for so long that she shifts uncomfortably wondering what she said wrong. “Bell? I’m sorry if I…”

Bellamy wraps his arms around her again and squeezes her so fast and hard that all she can do is let out another squeak. He laughs softly in her ear, but she can hear the emotion in his whisper.

“I’m so glad you came back for me, O. I’m so glad.”

The trip through the desert doesn’t seem as interminably long with friends to talk to. Monty and Harper talk about the farm they built in Shallow Valley with Clarke and Madi after Raven brought them all to the ground a year ago. Bellamy mostly just smiles, but occasionally he’ll add a word about Murphy and Emori and their upcoming wedding. Or Echo and Raven and their awkward flirting attempts that only ended when Raven “aggressively stuck her tongue down Echo’s throat”. And he doesn’t even seem to mind when Octavia takes his hand and holds it for almost the entire trip.

When they meet up with Clarke and Madi, the younger girl is nervous, but she looks every inch the commander. Octavia feels her heart go out to Clarke who stands back reluctantly, holding back tears.

“I’ll protect her, Clarke,” she says, and Clarke grips her arm appreciatively.

Madi’s command inspires fresh passion in the Wonkru soldiers and by the time they’re running through the valley for the Eligius ship, Octavia is happy to note they’re almost twice the number she remembers surviving from the former timeline.

Somewhere ahead, Clarke slips into the ship to try and stop McCreary’s madness, but they all suspect some events are set in stone and it’s not too much longer before the radios crackle with Raven’s resigned voice calling them to the ship.

Octavia finds herself sitting face to face with Diyoza as they all settle in and lick their wounds in the hallways of the Eligius ship.

The woman meets her eyes briefly and then glances away, one hand protectively over her stomach.

Octavia swallows hard. “Do you know what you’re having?”

Diyoza looks back at her, surprised. Then appraising. “A girl.” She flattens her palm a little more firmly over her stomach as if that will protect the baby inside.

“A girl,” Octavia echoes softly.

“O? You coming to the bridge?” Bellamy asks as he passes by with Clarke a few steps behind him.

A warm feeling comes over her as she gets to her feet and heads after them. She can feel Diyoza’s melancholy gaze on her back and before she can stop herself, she’s spinning around to face her.

“I was a fool to underestimate you,” she says quickly, the words tumbling clumsily over each other.

Diyoza raises an eyebrow in surprise. “Nice sentiment, but it was McCreary and his special brand of insanity that defeated you.”

Octavia shakes her head emphatically. “No, it was you. You outsmarted me. I should have shared the valley with you from the beginning.” She pauses to make sure Diyoza’s listening. “I won’t underestimate you again.”

The older woman doesn’t say anything, but there’s a gleam in her eyes that wasn’t there before as Octavia heads for the bridge.

Raven runs them through the inevitability of cryosleep and heading to Sanctum. There aren’t many dry eyes when Monty and Harper are up front with their intentions to stay awake and Octavia feels momentarily left out when the rest of the group gather in a tight hug. But then Clarke and Bellamy open their arms for her and smile, and she’s drawn into the family that she missed more than she knew.

“Okay, but what about when we get to Sanctum?” Clarke asks, all business once the tears have been dried.

“I’m not letting you get body snatched again, if that’s what you’re asking,” Bellamy mutters, pressing his nose into her hair.

The open display of affection is still somewhat new, and Octavia can’t help letting her gaze dart across the room to Echo, almost afraid to see what sort of tension was there. Instead, Echo smiles serenely at her and reaches out to lace her fingers through Raven’s open hand. Raven absently kisses the back of Echo’s hand and all of Octavia’s doubts fall away.

This is family. This is love. If they’ve accomplished this so far… they can do anything.

Octavia takes a deep breath. “We need to defeat Sheidheda. If we do that and then go back through the door to the time we left, we should lock in this timeline.”

Murphy’s eyes bug out so much that Octavia’s surprised they don’t fall out of his skull. “So, we… keep this timeline? This will be the real one?”

Emori punches him lightly in the shoulder. “Hey, time traveler. Remember that this _is_ real to some of us.”

“Right, right, sorry.” He rubs the spot on his shoulder tenderly as Emori smirks at him.

“How do we stop Sheidheda, O? How did he even get in in the first place?” Bellamy asks.

Octavia scans the room, an involuntary shudder running through her as her gaze lands first on Monty and Harper, then on Echo again.

“It’s… pretty bad. It affects people in this room more than… more than you might like to know. Are you sure you all want to hear it?”

She asks the question to everyone, but her stare is locked with Echo’s and she doesn’t break away until the former spy gives her a slight nod of assent.

Octavia turns to Monty and Harper. “Bell told you about your son? He accidentally finds Sheidheda a new body. Shortly after, Sheidheda escapes and enters the Anomaly.”

Harper looks a little white, but Monty rubs her back reassuringly as Octavia turns to Echo.

“You’re the body.”

“What?”

“That’s insane!”

Bellamy and Raven’s protests come on top of each other. Echo holds up her hand before they can escalate.

“Let her finish.”

Octavia licks her lips and starts to pace. “You had the nightblood and Jordan tricked you into implanting another mind drive into you. I don’t know where he got it. The next thing anyone knew, Sheidheda had uploaded himself from the ship to your drive. But I didn’t know how bad it was until after… after he used your body to convince me to trust him. Then it was too late. He was already in full control.”

Echo is pale, but she keeps steady, only nodding her understanding. “So, we destroy him before it gets to that point. We never give him access to the ship. Hell!” she stands abruptly, making Murphy and Emori both jump. “We never give him access to Madi. We take the flame out before we put her under cryo and we destroy it.”

Clarke is already nodding, and Raven looks relieved. The mechanic reaches tentatively for Echo’s hand and Echo lets herself be led back to her seat.

Bellamy looks around the room. “Is everyone agreed? We destroy the Flame now?”

“No!”

Every head whips around to stare at Octavia and she resists the urge to shrink under the weight of the stares.

“What do you mean, no?” Raven’s voice is even, but an edge of barely restrained anger lurks under the surface.

Octavia swallows hard. “Diyoza. I need to save Diyoza. Sheidheda has her trapped somewhere in the timestream and I need to go get her. That was the whole point.”

“Okay…” Bellamy has that tick in his jaw that means the stress is getting to him. “So we destroy the Flame and then go find Sheidheda and…”

“No!” Octavia slams her hand down on the table more forcefully than she meant to. “You don’t understand! It’s a loop now. If we destroy the Flame, Sheidheda never enters the timestream, and Hope never comes back to get all of you which means none of this happens.”

They all sit in silence, digesting that for a bit.

Raven finally closes her eyes and leans back a little. “That actually makes sense. I’ve been worried about when that sort of paradox shit was going to catch up to us.”

“That made sense to you?” Murphy’s tone rises. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Raven snorts and laces her fingers together over her forehead as if holding back a headache. “Shut up, Murphy.”

Echo is shaking slightly, but her jaw is set determinedly. “So for all of this to take place…. I will have to die?”

Octavia wants to lie. Say something, anything reassuring, but her tongue sits like lead in her mouth.

Echo stares her down. Acknowledges her silence with a sharp nod.

“Alright. Walk me through how this has to happen.”

“No. No way.”

Bellamy is fuming, anger rolling off him in tangible waves. Octavia shudders.

“This is not happening. I won’t let it.”

“Bellamy.” Echo slowly stands and turns towards him, pleading. “Let me do this. For all of you. You’ve all given me a family I never had and… I won’t do anything to endanger that.”

He grimaces, jaw set like steel.

She takes a step toward him hesitantly and gently lays a hand on his arm. “Please? For me, as much as anything else? Let me do this and make sure my family survives.”

“What if there’s a way we can have both,” Clarke interrupts, jolting everyone away from the scene.

She steps forward, twisting her hands together slightly. “We’ll have to be sneaky. Very sneaky. But I think we can manage it.”

Echo blinks at her. “How?”

Clarke’s smile is sly. Confident. Cocky, even.

“How do you feel about playing bait?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title from Desert by Other Lives and chapter title from Dust Bowl III by Other Lives.


End file.
